Has anyone seen the Wall Street Journal Polls?

I was trying to put a link on here because the look real good but it's not working, so I'll let you know what it is.
http://online.wsj.com/public/us
Florida has Kerry at a .4% lead
Arkansa has Kerry at a .2% lead
And it gets better.

but then, 4% probably isn't either.

This is looking nice ...

It was just because it was inside a Flash application presentation. There was a "print" tab at the bottom, so I clicked on that, and it opened a new window with a printable version. The printable version had a linked graphic file that could be linked here.

Except for its absurd editorial page, the WSJ is perhaps the best newspapers in the world. Here's what they say about the latest battlestate polls by Zogby.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-battleground04-an1006.html

The latest Zogby Interactive poll puts Mr. Kerry ahead of President Bush in 13 of the 16 closely contested states -- two more states than the Massachusetts senator led before the debate and the most since August. The latest survey was conducted between last Thursday, after the debate ended, and Tuesday afternoon, before vice-presidential contenders Dick Cheney and John Edwards debated.

Mr. Kerry moved ahead in two states (Ohio and Nevada) and increased his lead in seven others -- though Mr. Kerry's margin over Mr. Bush in Ohio, Arkansas and Florida was negligible -- less than one percentage point. Mr. Bush's lead narrowed in the three states (Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia) that he remains ahead of Mr. Kerry. Overall, seven of Mr. Kerry’s leads are within the margins of error, while all of Mr. Bush’s leads are. If the results on Election Day matched Zobgy's numbers, Mr. Kerry would win. Here's how:

To analyze Zogby's results, we begin by assuming that the District of Columbia and the 34 states that aren't in the battleground poll will vote for the same political party this November as they did in the 2000 election. Thus, Mr. Bush starts with 189 electoral votes and Mr. Kerry with 172. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win. To those numbers, we add the electoral votes from the latest poll, regardless of the margins of error or the spread between the candidates. Mr. Kerry's 13 states have 150 electoral votes, while Mr. Bush's three have 27 votes. The bottom line: Mr. Kerry would have 322 electoral votes and the president would have 216. That 106-vote margin is far wider than the last analysis, on Sept. 20, the president was just 56 electoral votes behind Mr. Kerry.

and all Democrats. Their pro-business tone clearly plays into our corner. The editoral page might as well be a liberal rag. Any polling group they use can not be trusted.

If so, is that accurate?

My understanding is that Zogby Interactive is a poll using the same kind of methodology that a regular poll uses, only using the Internet as the basis of communication. You sign up to be part of the pool, but they still choose those who take part based on random sampling. Different weighting methods are used to deal with the raw results than would be used in a phone poll. But, Zogby has been testing this and has tentatively concluded that the results are about as accurate as traditional phone polling and in some cases moreso, depending on the poll's purpose.

Again, this is according to my understanding. Corrections welcomed.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-battleground04-an1006.html




<snip>Mr. Kerry moved ahead in two states (Ohio and Nevada) and increased his lead in seven others -- though Mr. Kerry's margin over Mr. Bush in Ohio, Arkansas and Florida was negligible -- less than one percentage point. Mr. Bush's lead narrowed in the three states (Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia) that he remains ahead of Mr. Kerry. Overall, seven of Mr. Kerry’s leads are within the margins of error, while all of Mr. Bush’s leads are. <snip>

For instance, an electoral-college calculation by The Cook Political Report has the race about even. Adding the states that it finds solidly, likely and leaning for each candidate, it puts Mr. Bush ahead 208-207, with 123 electoral votes in the middle. The newsletter, which says it bases its calculations on information provided by both parties, names Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin among toss up states. <snip>

A count by Web site Slate, which relies on a variety of polling sources, puts Mr. Bush ahead 321-217. It includes in Mr. Bush's column states such as Arkansas, Florida and Nevada (in which Zogby shows narrow leads for Mr. Kerry) and Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Mexico (which Zogby says the senator leads firmly). <snip>

Nevertheless, the Zogby results gibe closely with those from some other state polls that have come out since the presidential debate. For example, Mr. Kerry’s 5.4-point lead in Pennsylvania is just a bit below the senator’s 7.3% lead shown by a poll taken by West Chester University. Similarly, the narrow Florida lead for Kerry in Zogby is close to that shown by the latest American Research Group poll. Yet, Zogby numbers also differ from some state polls. For example, while Zogby finds Mr. Kerry up by one point in Nevada, a SurveyUSA poll has Mr. Bush ahead by four points. <snip>

The rest of us get the crappy Republican-biased polls from Strategic Vision and SurveyUSA to discourage Democratic turnout and justify headlines like "bush solidifies huge leads in key states, plans for second term". Fuckin' liberal media.

Zogby and Harris were the only polls close to getting it right in 2000.

I've had this sick fascination with Survey USA since the California "glitch" a month or so ago. If we are to believe this polling company, most battleground states have had minimum 10 point, back and forth swings in the last month, which is unlikely even for one state unless it has a very low population or some dramatic event comes along. The first debate might qualify as "dramatic" for the purposes of a poll, but in this case, the swing is in the wrong direction according to Survey-USA. California, a state in which the large population should make the larger swings less common, has experienced up to 15 point swings. After the 1st debate, Kerry's support supposedly went down. California!

I'm starting to think they don't even bother with biased polling questions or methods. They seem just to make it up as they go along.

I'm still curious about the "Badger poll" for Wisconsin. Supposedly Shrub was up by somewhere around 10 points a week ago.

PA, OH, WI FL all go Kerry HE-YAAAA!

Yeah, I know this ain't 11/3 and it's only a poll but the trend is right .